Top Principal Software Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Designs, develops, maintains, and architects high-performance web applications supporting Cboe’s global markets. The role requires debugging complex scaling and production issues, leading technical direction across teams, enforcing design and engineering standards, reviewing requirements, supporting 24x7 systems, and leading remediation and incident reviews. The engineer also contributes to project scheduling, stakeholder communication, UX implementation, testing, scalability, resilience, and high availability.

Leads enterprise infrastructure automation strategy and hands-on engineering across Terraform, Ansible, policy-as-code, AWS, Kubernetes, and cloud/on-premises environments. Defines secure modules, governance, testing, release processes, identity controls, compliance automation, and self-service platform capabilities. Serves as technical authority for infrastructure-as-code architecture, audits, and regulatory controls while influencing engineering standards, mentoring engineers, and driving adoption across multiple organizations.

Principal Software Engineer responsible for architecting and delivering scalable full-stack systems for documents and customs services. The role includes designing microservices and distributed architectures, developing frontend and backend components, integrating AI and automation, optimizing databases and APIs, managing cloud-native deployments, troubleshooting production systems, and guiding engineering teams. The engineer will collaborate with product, UX, data science, and engineering stakeholders while mentoring teams and driving technical standards, reliability, and innovation.

Architect and develop foundational edge-computing runtime and integration platforms for connected-home devices. Build software models for device, spatial, and occupancy data; prototype and productionize new concepts; evaluate architectures; and provide technical leadership through design reviews, coding standards, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration. The role spans edge computing, IoT, distributed systems, embedded environments, intelligent agents, networking, and secure systems within an exploratory R&D organization.

Lead the architecture and modernization of a complex enterprise SaaS platform while remaining hands-on with critical software design and development. Define technical direction, improve scalability, reliability, security, performance, and maintainability, and guide design and code reviews. Partner across engineering and product teams, resolve complex technical challenges, establish engineering standards, mentor engineers, and translate architectural strategy into practical delivery.

Lead the technical vision, roadmap, and development of Elasticsearch’s ES|QL analytical engine and query capabilities. Design data-intensive systems, algorithms, APIs, and compute infrastructure; research search and analytics technologies; collaborate across product and engineering teams; mentor senior engineers; and contribute hands-on modern Java development. The role requires autonomous technical leadership, expertise in database internals and analytics systems, and the ability to guide complex projects from conception through delivery.

Lead architecture and technical direction for an AI-first SaaS product (Growth Studio). Define scalable services, APIs, data flows, and AI-enabled workflows; guide integrations, run architecture/code reviews and POCs; mentor engineers; produce technical documentation; and partner with product, UX, QA, and ops to deliver reliable, secure, and maintainable platform capabilities for GovCon customers.

Leads architecture and hands-on development of WEX’s semantic data platform and Data-as-a-Service capabilities. Builds reusable semantic business objects, metadata and ontology frameworks, knowledge graphs, APIs, governance, lineage, quality, and data contracts. Solves distributed-systems and scalability challenges while enabling AI and agentic applications to use trusted enterprise data. Partners across engineering, product, analytics, risk, finance, and business teams; influences technical standards, drives adoption, mentors engineers, and remains involved in implementation.

Set technical direction for Elastic Cloud Serverless control-plane initiatives, designing distributed systems that orchestrate projects across AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. Lead multi-quarter, cross-team delivery; write and review Go code; improve reliability, security, and cost efficiency; investigate incidents; participate in on-call; mentor engineers; and advise product and engineering leaders on technical trade-offs and roadmap decisions.

Owns technical direction and execution for major products and systems. Designs scalable backend, frontend, API, database, and infrastructure solutions; writes production code; drives architecture decisions; resolves complex engineering problems; improves testing, security, observability, and development practices; and mentors engineers across teams. The role requires leading major initiatives from design through production in a globally distributed environment.

Lead development of Elasticsearch vector similarity search capabilities, including designing algorithms and data structures, implementing features, fixing bugs, and improving code quality. Collaborate asynchronously with a globally distributed engineering team and open-source community. Serve as a subject-matter expert on vector search relevance and implementation while contributing modern Java code and guiding cross-functional initiatives autonomously.

Work with customers and cross-functional teams to design, build, and deliver cloud-based solutions. Lead design, identify dependencies, mentor engineers, act as DRI and on-call, and improve availability, reliability, observability, and performance. Contribute to open-source assets and collaborate with Microsoft product teams to produce extensible, maintainable code and scalable solution patterns.

Lead the architecture and development of reliable AI-powered email applications across backend, mobile, and desktop platforms. Design APIs and workflow systems supporting orchestration, state, tool use, retries, fallbacks, and failure handling. Lead a small senior engineering team, make architectural trade-offs, mentor engineers, and establish strong production practices including observability, monitoring, testing, scalability, security, and operational excellence. Partner with ML leadership to deliver robust, high-quality product experiences.

The role involves leading initiatives for vector search in Elasticsearch, enhancing features, resolving bugs, and contributing to community engagements in a distributed team setting. A strong background in vector similarity and Java is crucial.

Lead technical direction and hands-on execution for major software products and systems. Design scalable architectures across backend, frontend, APIs, databases, and infrastructure; write code; drive architecture decisions; solve production issues; improve testing, security, observability, and development practices; lead critical initiatives; and mentor engineers across distributed international teams.

Lead design and prototyping of generative AI experiences for autonomy development; drive UX for Hivemind products; perform user research, collaborate with CTO and product leads, and deliver reference implementations and integrations across full-stack web and edge systems.

The Principal Software Engineer will embed with product teams to solve complex technical problems, deliver production code, and make application and service-level architectural decisions. The role owns shared services, reliability, performance, incident response, and cross-system issue diagnosis. It also leads solution design, mentors engineers through influence, supports multiple products and domains, and establishes effective standards for AI-assisted software development.

Lead design and implementation of core platform infrastructure for an Agentic AI platform. Build high-performance Rust systems, support production deployments, collaborate with ML engineers, design scalable data architectures, troubleshoot performance and scalability issues, and cultivate a collaborative, inclusive engineering culture.

Design, develop, test, and integrate embedded software and firmware for defense systems. Apply object-oriented C++ development, scripting, and version-control practices across the full software lifecycle. Work in Agile/DevSecOps and model-based engineering environments, interface with stakeholders, and support on-target hardware integration and debugging.

Lead design and reliability of a financial data extraction platform, minimizing human validation through AI, and enhance system correctness for scale.

Drive architecture, design, and implementation of large-scale software systems. Lead technical strategy, mentor engineers, collaborate cross-functionally, ensure code quality and operational reliability, and guide delivery of complex features and platform improvements.

Senior technical leader owning end-to-end platform strategy, architecture, and delivery for Digital Enablement. Hands-on coding, driving modernization to cloud-native, API/microservices/event-driven designs, embedding AI-first practices, ensuring reliability, observability, and engineering excellence while mentoring teams and influencing cross-functional stakeholders.

Lead architecture and technical strategy for Event Technology and public web experiences. Design scalable AI-integrated systems, ship production-grade front-end and back-end software, ensure observability and resilience, evaluate human/AI-generated code, mentor engineers, and collaborate across product, UX, and cross-functional teams.

Lead design and delivery of scalable, secure full-stack systems; mentor engineers; integrate AI-driven and agent-based workflows; ensure cloud-native, containerized deployments and secure SDLC practices.

The Principal Software Engineer leads the design and development of scalable software solutions, mentors engineers, and drives architectural decisions while collaborating with cross-functional teams.